Hitting my stride

Ever feel like you look funny when you walk? Like your limbs and brain aren't quite in rhythm; your foot falls are awkward, your gait unnatural and self-concious? That's how I feel right now, too aware of myself to be myself. In my mind's eye I'm like Vincent D'Onofrio in Men in Black once he was merely a skin suit for the alien, trying to appear aloof and completely normal, but very obviously not so.

Things here are as I feared they might be. Like most daydreams that I have indulged to justify purchases of items I would ordinarily find useless, my party clutch collection remains pristine and un-used. I had this vision of meeting interesting people, making interesting friends, practicing my hard fought minimum language proficiency discussing capital punishment, globalization, mass media, and religion and family, all while being smartly attired and rocking a series of classy clutches. I'm not sure who I transform into in my daydreams, but that person does not exist. But if she did, she would have some achingly cute clutches to sport at receptions. What I've done instead isn't even worthy of describing. Neither is my attire. I'm pretty much ready to attend a funeral at a moments notice. My attire is almost always appropriately somber. People I barely know have commented on it. People of this culture can be blunt in ways we would consider rude. Whatever haters, I rock black.

There are some special circumstances here that didn't exist in previous stretches but in all other ways, it is a reboot of every other place I've worked. The only thing so far that I've found different is that time just melts away like I wish the pounds would. Every time I blink, another month is peeling away. This is a good thing-I'm actively counting down living in this apartment and dealing with some of the folks here I'm not going to miss. But it is a bad thing as well as it gives me less time to really accomplish anything.

I have moments when I wonder how infectious I could be in creating the kind of office I want to work in; perhaps I think too highly of myself and suppose I have power that I do not, indeed have. I have struggled with this a bit and I realized that I'm done being a worker bee. I set myself back from where I could be because I wanted to fill in some experiences that I wanted to get out of the job just in case I decided to leave. I recognize I was amazingly lucky to inherit the team I did, but when I was calling the shots, we knocked it out of the park. It's been hard since that validating experience leading a team, to work for shitty managers. I have an idea about how things should be done, and I see the impact when things are not done that way. I see people comparing work to prison, people tearing one another down, people stove piping to avoid someone they don't like and whose judgement they don't trust, people jockeying for position if they are so inclined, people distracted from the work by the faculty required to navigate the personalities. It's insulting to spend any part of the long days employing stratagem for how you're going to ask someone a question.

Possible this is textbook (circa 1990) group dynamics with the storming, norming, forming, boring...and six months from now I'll be sobbing at my keyboard as the first wave starts to depart from this place because we were so awesome as a group. Who knows. I'm still keeping my sights set on just getting out of here without getting bit by a stray dog (Baloo either).

non sequitur Epilogue: For old boyfriends stopping by the blog on a summer evening (apologies to Robert Frost)

Not long before I left the U.S. (two days in fact), I heard from someone that for lack of a better term I'll call an ex boyfriend (it was never terribly well-defined but managed to take some years to be done with). He stumbled across my blog in the way that most people do, googling my last known e-mail address and landing here from the old blog. Happens all the time (insert sarcasm here). He was wondering about me as I have wondered about him, as we have all wondered about someone we used to date, and he started commenting on this blog in a way that could be construed as either clever/funny or creepy/scary. It quickly moved offline and we had a brief e-mail reunion before I declined to stay in touch on the grounds that I felt married men should not be pen pals with other women they once suggested marriage to, even though it was nice to know his rock-solid marriage could support such a relationship. I was proud of myself, proud that I didn't even get an ankle caught in the rabbit hole that would be opening back up to him.

What was interesting other than him looking for me and finding this was that he really tucked in and *read* this blog. Not sure if he read it end to end (though if he did, bravo) but it was flattering in a way, perhaps an unhealthy way, but honestly, if anyone reads for (almost) any reason, and keeps coming back, I'm happy as a writer. Why he was thinking of me, what he hoped to get out of re-hashing our decade past relationship, whatever all of that was, I don't know. I just know he kept coming back here for a time. I know at times I wrote about him, I didn't bother looking for those things to hide them from him, they are what they are. We were what we were (at least for me). Either way, it was nice to be sought out. Feels like I won the silent game of chicken between exes who wonder if the other one ever thinks about them. Yep, I'm petty like that.

And I totally won.

After what my pride suffered in knowing him, I hope he won't begrudge this hollow victory I claim, after all, he's happily ever after, right? There's a happy dance associated with that empty victory but the league may penalize me a down if I insist on doing it (is that how it works? I don't know sports).

Ciao

It's been a busy time here with head full of the minutia and limbs busy with the tasks of preparing to move abroad.  This weekend, visiting with my family, I started to get a little sad.  I have cried, I will cry some more.  It seems to be the way I roll, how I commemorate major transitions in life.  It's hotter than I hope it will be on the day we leave.  I worry about that and its possible impact on Baloo's ability to travel with me but it will be what it will be.

When I write, there's a natural rhythm, an ebb and flow.  I haven't (yet) imposed any discipline to my writing, schedule or content wise but it's something I admire in other writers.  However you go about it though, I think all writers wonder how long they should keep on with one project or another, what is a lull versus a sign to move on, etc., and then one day, you know.  You know because you stop wringing your hands about it.  This feels like the last post and I just want to tell you everything I've been writing in my head over the last month or so even though that's impossible.  I want to tell you about today and the letter I read from my grandfather to my father on the occasion of my father's 21st birthday, a letter we just learned existed, a letter still moving through me a bit and making me a little weepy and wishing my grandfather were still alive.  I want to tell you about the man I like and wax eloquent once again about how he'll never be mine or how it wouldn't work out for one reason or another in the tight vacuum of my imagination I always create for these types of things.  I think I'm getting a little better at risking rejection and trading experience over imagination with regard to potential romance but proximity does not serve me with this latest guy so daydream fodder he must be.

When I have been writing, I've been starting (still) unfinished and unpublished treatises on friendship which are really just open letters to specific people I am unwilling to engage directly with.  If I'm being as honest as I try to be with myself here, my reluctance to engage isn't distaste for confrontation, or fear, or even a feeling that the emotional investment in an argument/discussion outstrips my actual investment in the friendship.  I just don't believe talking about it will change anything--more accurately, I don't believe talking about *should* change anything.  We spend our lives contorting to conform to one expectation or another, I don't believe friends should have to try to change who they are with one another and it's okay to discover that you're not as compatible as you initially were or thought you were.  It's like all those romantic comedies where everything is perfectly ok between two people and then the 'one-true-love' enters the scene and it's time to break it off with Mr/Ms perfectly-fine-but-not-for-me.  Since we're allowed to have more than one friend, the challenge is minimal and and really only a challenge with those who are on a different wavelength with regard to how close you actually are and levy BFF requirements and expectations on a relationship that is really in the casual to close acquaintance zone.  My thoughts on this don't lend themselves to clear expression in writing but short story long,  friendship at it's best is a refuge from all of that.

In 48 hours or so, we take to the sky and start a new adventure.  I'm nervous about the logistics of getting there, hopeful that Baloo will make it okay, and already missing my family.  I'm so fortunate to have the family and friends I have.  I'm so grateful that my Mom is here, that her and my father finally get to enjoy everything they have worked for together.  My sister is here, hanging with me in this shitty hotel room (it really is awful--there was something that could have been vomit on the elevator last night) making me a little weepy.  My Dad came over to help me yesterday and told me he was sad but also a little jealous of the adventure that awaits me and Baloo.  I think my Mom is just sad.  My brother wants to come out to party (not holding my breath), and I already have a queue of visitors just waiting for me to set up house so they can experience this next chapter with me.  My Soul Twin will be one time zone away and all the rest of my friends will be short flights away by the fall.  My language has degenerated back to polite phrases and semi-memorized passages about global warming and capital punishment but I'm not sweating it right now.  I just learned yesterday that peanut butter is not really a staple there as it is here and I almost wanted to go MIA.

I don't know if I'll be back to this space in the near term but my 3 loyal readers and especially Lodo and Teresa, I won't leave you hanging.  Your patronage and comments made this blog what it was/is for me.  I had a friend in high school who never said goodbye because you never know what the future holds.  Instead she would say 'see you later' so friends, I shall see you later.

I'll get good at this eventually

Not sure what's going to happen with the blog when I head across the pond.  It might go on long intermission, it might become access controlled, it might just go away.  I've been writing intermittent missives to my e-mail friends during my language journey.  Perhaps e-mail dispatches will become the new blog.  All of this impacts approximately 3 people, including me so not really a big deal.

Semisonic comes to mind this week; "you don't have to go home but you can't stay here."  I don't want to go and I don't want to stay here.  After only a week, my spirit is a little crushed.  Working for 8 hours really is overkill.  We should get paid an 8 hour salary to work 3-5 hours a day.  Get in, get it done, get the fuck out.  Go spend some 8 hour money in our badly needing it economy, get home while it's still daylight, spend time with your friends and family, go to the gym, have a life.  When I was in language, the tasks piled up and waited for me.  I would breeze in on a Friday and just knock shit out and when I was done, peace out.  I wasn't waiting for 5, when I could leave without explanation.  Today, the day stretched out in front of me endless and I got nothing done.  Everything was mind-numbingly boring.  I'm tired of chasing people down, of having my personal life pile up on me, of walking the hard halls in heels (that ends today).

Somewhat random aside; more women need to check their asses in pants.  There is a lot of unfortunate happening out there, primarily in the cases where god did not see fit to grant asses and the pants seem to concave tightly into the back of the thighs.  It's especially tragic to me when it appears a lot of effort is being made to look nice.  All I'm saying is there are too many cuts of black dress pants out there for you to rock concave ass.  Bring a hand mirror into the dressing room.

A man flirted with me yesterday and I wish I had done just about anything else than what I didn't do, which is...I don't know, try to see him again.  Even though I'm here for a minute, even though he said he was a "follower" of some random internet dude's exercise and mobility program and also used the word "voodoo" non-ironicaly to explain how the mobility exercises worked.  We were probably a perfect pair.  After all, I was the one doing deep knee bends in a skirt and suit jacket and letting a stranger wrap my leg in an inner tube.  I could explain how this all came about but I'm not, not because it's a long story but because it's not as interesting as those snippets suggest.

Revisionist History

Once there was a boy who bravely came a knocking on the door of my parent's house.  My dad knew his mom and from his mom, knew he had bad grades.  He wasn't a drug dealer, didn't get into trouble, just had the D average my father's other two other kids would eventually graduate with.  The boy asked for me and my father told the boy he didn't have time for girls, he needed to go home and study.  I was 15 or so when this happened but today was the first I heard this guy had ever come over to see me.

I know boys are notorious hound dogs so maybe I shouldn't give him too much credit, knowing anything resembling feelings were probably protected by an armor of hormones, but coming to a girl's house is something to me, especially my house.  I spent high school and onward thinking I wasn't the girl guys liked, and somehow this story kind of knocked over a domino in my head and made me consider my history a little differently.  To be sure, I was no Lolita, but today I'm realizing between my insecurity, which came off as indifference or aloofness, and my father, and my weird reputation (one guy remarked he was surprised to see me outside after dark because it was apparently common knowledge I wasn't allowed out after sunset--which by the way wasn't explicitly true), guys probably expected to get shut down at the Ava express.  Some tried to board, but the ones my dad didn't turn away without my knowledge, I shut down myself.  All this time I spent feeling undesirable, tonight I wonder if the biggest difference between me and all the other girls might just be that they humor a guy, let him work out the kinks a bit before they decide if he's worth the trouble.  Now my dad tells me I need to cut men some slack when they are trying to talk to me.  After almost 40 years of habit, he wants me to try indulging a pick up.  Lord are they desperate for grandchildren...

So....

I'm thinking I might be an asshole.  There are lots of different types of assholes and I think I might be a combination of an old asshole, arrogant asshole, and snotty asshole with a dash of indifferent asshole.  Just a working theory right now but I'm fleshing it out...  The kids I'm sitting with in my 'you-don't-really-work-here-temporary-desk' are irritating the shit out of me.

In that way

I think I am taking it less personally this time but I am still weary of the pattern.  The pattern being my pathological attraction to people who are not into me in any way.  At least not in that way.  It's so much easier not to take it personally because I want him so badly to have who he wants instead.  This time around it was far more about wanting to be wanted than wanting to be wanted by him.

If I were to attempt to understand or explain how or why I am always the same person in the same relationship status I would say this to me:

You are not ugly but you are not attractive enough to be aloof.  You dismiss guys obviously responding to your looks but you don't give them anything else to go off of because you don't show yourself.  You keep working to deserve someone and that just makes you less and less approachable.

At least that's my best guess.  Guess it doesn't really matter why the rain falls; doesn't make it any less or more wet.

Update

It's finally over.  I passed my language test which should have felt like a million bucks and led to one of those celebratory jumping things people do in movies or TV.  While I can not understate the relief I had to no longer study capital punishment or pensioners in a foreign language--things I don't even read or speak about in English, it was kind of anti-climatic.  One of my favorite quotations comes to mind from How Beautiful With Shoes which I (again) won't do justice but in essence is that danger averted was never really dangerous.  It is true my stomach was in knots, I nearly cried the morning of the test with stress and exhaustion, and I left the test soaked in sweat--my waistband was damp and my sweater was soaked to the elbows with sweat--sexy.  But then it was over and there was no one to celebrate with.  For some reason I thought of the cast of SNL and stand-up comedians.  Specifically how they have a 'party' (i.e. drinks) after their show because you need a way to come down from the adrenaline of performance.  I went home like a sad sack, took a shower and got in my PJ's.  But it's done and I am glad, even if I say stupid things like, 'it couldn't have been that hard if I passed it.'  What-the-fuck-ever, it's done and I don't have to deal with it again for 3 years.  That seems like long enough to forget everything.

In other news, I definitely do not like the man I will be working for and I am increasingly concerned that this assignment borne out of comically amusing circumstance and accepted out of curiosity and a dash of involuntary hope will not change my life for the better.  I will leave, almost 40, even more bitter and tired and probably back out of shape.  I think if things unfold that way, I have no choice but to interpret that as an undeniable 'fuck you' from the universe and will likely conclude I have nothing left here to see.  Fuck *you* universe, I don't have to take that from you.

My boss is a fucktard.  Really.  If I'm lucky, I will figure out a way to limit my exposure to him and it will be as well as it can be.  Already, I plan on finding another office to work out of while I'm still here so I can actually get some work done and not be pulled into meetings about absolutely nothing for "5 minutes" where he waxes eloquent about the same thing he discussed with you 1 hour before (also useless).  He speaks slow and deliberately like he's explaining physics to a 10 year old but instead he's dispensing gems like, 'make sure you have a valid driver's license before you leave.'  It exhausts me to both hold my tongue and submit to the time wasting exercise that is almost every conversation I have with him.  Folks who don't work for him euphemistically say 'he's a talker!'  That's not doing it justice at. all.  At. all.

So now the countdown is on.  About 6 weeks from now, I will be exhausted and frayed and probably smelly and regretful about the choices I make, while simultaneously trying to think up the upside so I don't walk into traffic the night before my flight.  This has been a tough 8 months and it will be followed by another tough 8 months with the chaos of moving and settling in, getting the lay of the people and the land, and the rigors of a new job.  I went to a wedding last weekend and a couple of folks there thanked me for my service, simply because I worked for the government which I thought was weird.  Even when I was military, I didn't care for people thanking me for my service.  It's not service, I get paid to do this.  If I were smarter or independently wealthy, I wouldn't be working at all or at least not working for the government.  I think the nobler the cause, the more heartbreaking the job because noble causes are just ideas of the ideal.  They are rarely embodied by your colleagues or even your nation so as a general rule, it's not a good idea to get wrapped up in them as a raison d'etre.  I think people who live for those kinds of things, the 'true believers' are the most vulnerable because a loss of faith shakes them to the core.  In many ways, it's a tougher struggle to believe in nothing because you have no false comfort or shelter from the inevitable frustrations that come with any job but I think it also makes you more pragmatic and efficient in getting actual things done.

So today, I will find a place to sit away from the fray, politely decline the invitation to socialize with my colleagues this weekend, and try to get some shit knocked out before I leave work at the end of the day to attend to the things that actually matter in life.